Thursday, 25 February 2016

Our
friend Lindsay, from Rowleys Catering, was in the racecourse office the other
day. 'A colleague of mine,' he said 'asked whether you actually wrote your own
blog.' I
was flattered of course, thinking that Lindsay’s colleague imagined that we
employed an expensive ghost writer. 'No.' he said 'She just thought it was full
of the usual promotional claptrap that you’d expect from an underpaid PR
executive.'Well
that hurt. Because I used to be an underpaid PR executive; it was fun and I’d always
laboured under the impression that I’d fooled everyone. I even used to
script quotes on behalf of racecourse executives. Only now
do I realise that no one believed a word I wrote – and they still don’t.
Everything’s too positive, too perfect. And life isn’t really like that. Except for the tips - which win with a rarity that lends a smattering of
authenticity to each post (this time it's the turn of Grumeti at Fontwell Park on Sunday).So
this week there will be no promotions, no glossy pictures painted. This week
it’s just horseracing: the plain unvarnished truth. Controversial statements
all the way...Let’s start with girls: they’re just not as good as boys. They're slower,
weaker and prone to mood swings caused by hormonal fluctuation – after all,
that’s why mares are entitled to a weight allowance when running in conditions
races isn’t it? Because let’s be clear, I’m talking about horses here and not
humans. In
fact, in case my daughter reads this, let’s just clarify that statement:
girls are miles better than boys. Obviously. They’re more intelligent, funnier,
prettier and better at performing more than one task at the same time. It’s
just a shame that the boys don’t have to carry a 7lb backpack when it comes to
the school cross-country event. Excitingly,
the favourite for this year’s Champion Hurdle is a mare. And such is the spell
cast by Annie Power (men are popular; girls always cast a spell) that some
people believe that she could win the race with or without a weight allowance.
If she wins convincingly, it could help to change attitudes – because we are guilty of discrimination. Male horses, including geldings and entire horses, account for more than 80% of all horses racing over jumps. There were fewer
horses bred during the recession and, while numbers are recovering,
there are still less horses in training now than there were in 2011. In an effort
to encourage more racehorse owners to give mares a chance, the
industry has come up with a scheme to enhance prize money when a mare wins – by
as much as £10,000 for appropriately registered horses. Much better to have
them racing than sat in the field.

And
what about female jockeys? I’m not going to recommend that they should sit in a field.
Tony McCoy suggested that they should receive a weight allowance when riding
against male jockeys - a bit like mares. But
that’s far too controversial a topic for me; after all, I’m just an ex-PR guy.

Thursday, 18 February 2016

This
year Jimmy Moffatt will attempt to do something that no racehorse trainer has
ever done before – and I’m not talking about tipping the winner of every
championship race at Cheltenham, when he appears at our Festival Preview Night
on Thursday 10th March. Although that would be handy too.

Just
three trainers (Ivor Anthony, Denys Smith and David Elsworth) have won both the
Lincoln Handicap and the Grand National, but no trainer has ever won both races
in the same year – a feat known as the ‘Spring Double’. While the first race
marks the start of the Flat season, the second is the zenith of the Jumps
season and the two races take place on consecutive Saturdays in early April.

The
challenge of backing the winners of both races, never mind training them, is so
difficult that William Hill Bookmakers once gave thousands of potential
investors a free £20 bet on the double. The offer followed an abortive attempt,
in 1999, at floating the company on the stock exchange – at which point they
gave everyone, who had registered an interest in the floatation, a voucher for the free bet. It
would be easy to view the offer as a cynically empty gesture – but I, like many
other punters, latched on to the John Dunlop trained 9/2 Lincoln favourite
Right Wing, who won cosily by half a length.

My
Grand National selection was Addington Boy, who was well supported in the
market to 10/1. My potential winnings were £1,100, for a completely free stake,
and although Addington Boy eventually finished fourth (winning me nothing), it
was one of the most thrilling bets that I’ve ever placed. So imagine how
exciting it is going to be when Jimmy Moffatt completes the Spring Double with
Golden Town and Highland Lodge, both of which can be easily backed for their respective races at 50/1.
That’s 2,600/1 for the win double or just over 180/1 if they can both reach a place.

I
should point out that I know almost exactly nothing about Golden Town's chances in the Lincoln. But,
having become the top trainer at Cartmel last year, I have faith in Jimmy
achieving pretty much anything that he sets his mind to (as long as it involves
training horses and has nothing to do with rocket science).

Highland
Lodge, on the other hand, has won a race over at least 3 miles (like ten of the
last ten Grand National winners); has an official rating higher than 137 (like
ten of the last ten winners); has run at least three times since August (like
nine of the last ten winners); has won a chase worth more than £29,000 (like
nine of the last ten winners); has previously been placed over the National
fences - when winning the Becher Chase (like seven of the last ten winners) and
will carry no more than 11st (like eight of the last ten winners).

Asked
about Highland Lodge’s chances by The Racing Post, Jimmy was quoted as
saying “We’re pretty confident.” Which is how I feel about this weekend’s
selection: Clic Work at Wincanton on Saturday.

Thursday, 11 February 2016

According to a
television programme that I saw last week, we don’t have as much control over
our actions as we think. In fact it appears that the notion of ‘free will’ could just be a
myth – our bodies simply react to trillions of competing stimuli in an
automated process over which we have no conscious control. This could explain
quite a lot.The TV
presenter, who was a Doctor (so it must be true), showed us an experiment in
which a patient was connected to various laboratory machines and instructed to
move their limbs while electromagnetic beams were aimed at their head. By
changing the electromagnetic settings, the Doctor could make the patient move
the ‘wrong’ limb – although, weirdly, the patient always thought that the
unintended movement was their own idea, thus maintaining the misconception that
we are responsible for our own actions.The implications
for horseracing are huge. For a start, no one can possibly blame me if
Starchitect doesn’t win the Betfair Hurdle at Newbury this weekend. My choice
of selection has basically been preordained by a sequence of events which are
entirely outwith my own control. Moreover, we can’t blame the jockey, the trainer
or the horse either – they’re all just creatures responding to a complex matrix
of external forces. Although it should be noted that Starchitect is a
particularly handsome creature and this may well turn out to be one of the
forces that discriminates in his favour. In another
programme this week, I heard an anthropologist discussing a similar theme.
Simon McBurney spends his time asking people to point to the place where their
‘consciousness’ comes from. As you’d expect, most adults in western
civilisation point to their brain. Some people might point to their heart,
which is a nice sentiment, especially with Valentines Day just around the
corner. But in the isolated wilds of the Amazon Rain Forest, McBurney found a
tribe of people who pointed at the jungle surrounding them. Their belief is that
their consciousness comes, not just from the self, but from their environment –
which links us back to the hypothesis of the Doctor on TV. I’m not sure why
I didn’t see this before. I am quite certain that if you asked a hundred
thousand Irishmen where their consciousness comes from, they’d point East
towards Cheltenham. Like a murmuration of starlings swooping in the Autumn
dusk, or a hive of bees swarming in the Spring, droves of punters migrate
across the Irish Channel each year in March – apparently coordinated by the
unseen hand of fate. Few know how they managed to get to Cheltenham; even fewer
know how they got back.Most of the
Irish contingent will be hardwired to bet on any horse trained by Willie
Mullins. They’ll probably go home having backed a high proportion of winners.
Unfortunately, I’m pre-programmed to support horses at longer prices (it’s a
medical condition known as ‘greed’) – and will consequently come away much
poorer. But at least I know, now, that it isn’t my fault.

Thursday, 4 February 2016

I have a dusty
file at home, full of letters received from racecourse managers
- responding to my requests for work experience from the age of sixteen onwards.
Some of them are very short, most are polite and almost all of them contain the
word ‘no’ somewhere within the text. There are some
exceptions. A few took the time to offer advice and a couple even
invited me to visit their racecourses – anywhere from Folkestone in the south,
to Kelso in the north (which was a tad far at the time). It was Geoff Stickels, the father of Chris Stickels
(Ascot’s Clerk of the Course) who eventually gave me the opportunity to tread
in divots at Lingfield Park. That was before they built the all-weather track;
they don’t need divot-treaders for many Lingfield meetings nowadays. A few years passed, the sand arrived at Lingfield and I received a degree in Agriculture (or something similar, I've forgotten) from a University near Colwick Park - at a time when they still staged jump racing there. Geoff introduced me to his Marketing Director, Roger Easterby, who later became
the Marketing Director of the Tote. Roger gave me a job as Race-day Announcer in the
Weighing Room, putting out messages over the PA system: non-runners, jockeys’
colour changes and vehicles that had left their lights on in the car park. I
made all the announcements at Lingfield, Folkestone and Brighton and I wasn’t very good at it – so
I was rapidly ‘promoted’ to other roles like chief-leaflet-deliverer and
pub-poster-putter-upper. None of the
jobs were full time but, because I was keen, I picked up extra work at Ascot
Racecourse, Ladbrokes and a company which delivered flour all over the country
- not that this had much to with horseracing, but at least it gave me plenty of
time to read The Sporting Life. It was a good apprenticeship and there weren’t
many jobs on a racecourse that I didn’t experience to some degree or another –
so, if there are any young aspiring racecourse managers out there, I would
recommend getting some casual work at your local (or even not so local) track. As it happens,
we’re looking for people to help us this Summer at Cartmel Racecourse. Each
season we directly employ around 120 staff at the races, not including the
security stewards, caterers and tote operators. The office team expands too, as we employ an extra
person to handle enquiries and assist in the coordination of events from May
through to the end of August. Anyone
interested in working at the racecourse, regardless of whether they’re seeking
a new career or a little extra beer money, should write us a letter - I promise
you’ll get a reply. To work in the
office, it’d help if applicants are numerate, literate and have a sense of
humour. No other specific qualifications are necessary - unlike entrants for the
Cheltenham Foxhunter Steeplechase, who should either have won two
point-to-point races or been placed first or second in at least two
hunter-chases. Pena Dorada achieved that before winning two handicap chases at
Cartmel last year and returns to hunter-chasing at Musselburgh this Sunday, in
preparation for a shot at the Cheltenham Festival next month. Pena Dorada is our
selection for the weekend.

About the Author

Jonathan has made a career out of being a racing geek - having spent time running The Sun newspaper's "Punters Club", the (long departed) Sporting Life's Green-card Service, Worcester Racecourse, Fontwell Park, Scottish Racing Marketing Ltd and now the iconic Cartmel Racecourse.

In his spare time he likes to study form and go to the races.

All opinions, recommendations or forecasts, expressed or implied within the blog or website, are for informational purposes only and should not be construed as financial advice.

Users are solely responsible for any consequences resulting from acting on information included in the blog or on the website. Neither Jonathan Garratt nor Cartmel Racecourse is in anyway liable for any direct, indirect or consequential loss, damage or expense incurred by readers or users of the blog or website.

Where applicable, independent financial advice should be obtained. Past results are not in any way a guarantee of future success.